Anxiety in brief: Assessment of the five-item trait scale of the state-trait anxiety inventory in South Africa
Abstract
The current study examined the psychometric properties of a short form of the trait scale
of the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Participants consisted of a convenience sample of
students (n = 322) who completed the five-item version of the trait scale of the State-Trait Anxiety
Inventory, the Perceived Stress Scale, the nine-item version of the Beck Hopelessness Scale, the
10-item version of the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, and the Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder Checklist. We used classical test theory and item response theory (Rasch and Mokken
analyses) to examine the psychometric properties of a previously proposed five-item version of this
scale. These approaches confirmed that the five-item measure of anxiety had satisfactory reliability
and validity, and also confirmed that the five items comprised a unidimensional scale.